There’s no doubt that during March Madness and after the end of the National Championship game that there were hundreds of articles posted about the final teams, games, and the national championship winners. Undoubtedly most people have heard about the students have announced after their school finished in the March Madness competition that they will be forgoing the rest of their schooling to go into the NBA draft. While there aren’t more students this year leaving school to go to the draft there still are a lot of them. We all knew that schools like Kentucky and UNC would have students leaving for the draft because they do almost every year. The surprising student that announced that he was leaving for the draft after only two years in school was Ohio State’s Jared Sullinger.
Many students and fans of Ohio State knew that it was a possibility that Sullinger would be leaving after this season at Ohio State but not many truly thought that he would go through with it. Many fans that I spoke to after his announcement last week said that they thought he would continue for at least one more year due to the fact that he wasn’t able to play that much this year. In my opinion though, that’s a big factor as to why he is leaving. He wasn’t able to play as much as he usually would because he had some minor injuries, none of which would prevent him from leaving school to go to the draft but ones that could scare him into thinking that if something worse were to happen his chance at playing in the NBA could be over before it even started.
There was tremendous uproar over the loss that Ohio State suffered to Kansas during the Final Four games. Many fans and students said that they didn’t think Ohio State played as well as they could have but what they don’t realize is how different it is to play in a stadium that is so different than anything a team has played in before. Granted Ohio State was doing really well during the first half and many people, including myself, thought that they would win the game, not lose by two points, Ohio State still played one heck of a game.
Jared Sullinger and his fellow Buckeye’s made it far in the March Madness competition two years in a row, but neither year did they make it to the championship. There’s still a chance that they could next year or any year after that, but from Sullinger’s standpoint, now is the right time to go into the draft and give a shot to the NBA. I know that the team won’t be the same next year without Sullinger but that doesn’t mean they won’t still do well. The team will still have two key players, Aaron Craft and DeShaun Thomas. The Buckeye’s will have a lot of change going on next season without Sullinger being on the team, but now is the time for fans to wonder what is coming next for the team.
